Oncology red flags for general practitioners
When patients come in the clinic, what red flags could general practitioners be on the look out for to indicate cancer?
Ahead of his lectures at this weekend's Fetch Nashville conference, Craig Clifford, DVM, MS, DACVIM (Oncology), shared some tips and tricks that general practitioners can utilize when they have a patient in the clinic to determine if their symptoms could indicate an oncology concern or not. Throughout the interview, Clifford explains why he loves the expression, "Don't Wait, Aspirate," coined by Sue Ettinger, DVM, DACVIM (Oncology), what weight loss can do to help determine oncology cases or not, and more!
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Below is a full transcript, edited lightly for clarity
Craig Clifford, DVM, MS, DACVIM (Oncology): Sure. My name is Craig Clifford. I am a medical oncologist at Blue Pearl Malvern. I did my veterinary training at Mississippi State University. My internship and residency were at Penn. After that, I was at Red Bank Veterinary Hospital, which at the time was the largest privately owned referral hospital in the country for about 11 years, had the opportunity then to buy into a hospital hope veterinary specialist were able to grow that dramatically. And about 5 years ago, we sold to the Mars network, and now we are under Blue Pearl.
I think, part of it's going to be history, you know, is the owner describing a lump that's been there for a period of time. All lumps should be aspirated. You know, Sue Ettinger, who is an oncologist in New York, has a big thing, "Why wait, Aspirate," and I completely agree with that. If you feel something, you can easily stick a needle in it. You can look at it in-house, or send it off for cytology to see whether it's cancer.
So unexplained weight loss, if a case comes in for weight loss that doesn't make sense and it's an older patient understanding the breed, we know that there are certain breeds that are more predisposed to cancers that can lend to it the history. How long has it been going on for? If a patient has been losing weight for 2 or 3 years, that's probably not going to be cancer, because of the fact that ideally, you would have assumed it would have reared its ugly head. So I think the primary care doctor not blowing off a historical or a finding due to the fact that maybe it's an older patient. Always look at it that there are diagnostics that can be done that can help us get to the answer.
